


Let Me Be Human

by AlastorGrim



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 21:12:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19035694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/pseuds/AlastorGrim
Summary: Ignore This.





	1. Love

**Author's Note:**

> If you're here, though I don't know why you would be, things are about to get very personal. I'm posting this because my mind is loud, my journals and phone are no longer safe, and the chaos of my mind needs somewhere to rest. 
> 
> If you read this, you will look at me differently. That's okay. I don't expect you to be here, but I can't keep this in drafts forever. I don't like the things I've written here. But if they're deleted, I think I might feel hollow. So I'm posting it to keep its permanence. 
> 
> My prose goes wild in here. My spelling and grammer are unchecked. I've never had a beta in my LIFE, so I certainly won't have one for this one. 
> 
> Some of these are letters to different people. 
> 
> Some of these are my own insecurities vomited up into something resembling poetry. 
> 
> Some haven't been written yet.
> 
> And all of them come from me. That is a warning in and of itself.

To My Oldest Love,

To be completely honest, I've always put you on this pedestal that I couldn't reach but thankfully no one else could either. And you always seemed so distant and cold, which is why I never understood my attraction to you.

I like warmth. I like colors. I like humor and happiness. 

None of which were things that described you.

So yes, I never quite got why I was so enamored with you. I tended to push it aside, thought maybe it was _because_ I had liked you for so long that I felt this way. That you were my beautiful, icy exception.

But it's only now I realize that you weren't an exception.

I realized this, of course, just as I heard that you were unobtainable to me in a whole different sense; a sense that didn't involve my self-esteem issues or your seeming emotionlessness. No, this new unobtainablity that you have is entirely too human for me to continue to think that way.

And I'll admit, with shame, that I was in love with you. But I was in love with you in a way that I loved the thought of you more than the sight of you.

I can recognize now that you weren't an exception because you were in a completely different category. I clung to you because you reminded me of _myself_. I built you up in my head - a goal, a me that I could never be but so desperately wanted to - and attached you to a life I wanted.

The reason you caught my interest was your intelligence. Your reasoning was impeccable, and you could match me, an amature wordsmith, tongue to tongue and cheek to cheek.

I remember when we met, still childishly naive, that you matched my wit with that of your own, and it seemed we danced with those swords of words for months on end before I recognize how you were affecting me.

Then, it seemed you were untouchable.

You fell away and I was too much of a coward to try to reach for you.

I always say that I'm not afraid of a lot of things, but I'm terrified of more than I can name. I was terrified of rejection and abandonment, which only seemed more likely as I saw less and less of you, and began to put you on a throne in my mind to make up for your absence.

But it was not you. The boy I made up in my mind was never you, and he could never be you.

He was cold, calculating, always too smart to be anything but a million steps ahead of me, and caught in that gray, blue-green blur of color I remembered you in last.

But while he remained, unchanged, inhuman, _safe_ , in my head...

You moved.

You didn't move on, because you were always right there, on the edge of my own vulnerability, but you changed.

You grew up, added more colors, _brighter_ colors to your palate, and got bolder. It's only now that I realize that I could've had you, had I not been so preoccupied with clinging to the you I made in my mind in fear that you would do exactly what you did.

I wrote about you, you know? I loved you, truly, I did. My words are my heart, my soul, everything I've got to give. And somehow I gifted them to you without giving them to you.

Now this veil I've been hiding behind - this hard, diamond, statuette of you that I made, has crumbled, all with a few whispered words from a friend.

You are undeniably human. 

I loved you. But I didn't. And I'm not saying that I never loved you, because I did, years ago. But the truth is I don't know who you are anymore.

That's not to say that I would be opposed to being with you now, because you're still amazing...

But I'm a careful lover.

I can't trust you now because I can't tell what you are anymore.

But I would love to get to know you.

Sincerely, Me.


	2. Obsession

To My Kingly Thought,

You are so dangerously enticing and I am still enamored with you. I have no self-control when it comes to you. In my mind I have given you everything. Everything that matters I have let you take.

My words were yours to destroy, my eyes were yours to blind, my blood was yours to spill, my skin was yours to scar, and my heart was yours to hurt. 

I had always thought you a glacier underground, icy and metallic, an unchanging, ruthless relic. You were always so, so far above me, and you always left me stumbling, ecstatic, to catch up. You didn't care about me. And that's why you were so enticing. You were completely and utterly unreachable and I love you for it.

It's not healthy. This is not healthy. I'm not healthy, and by extent, as your maker even though I've placed you so far ahead of me, YOU are not healthy. But its been so long, that I've become dependent on you. You were a safe, if horrible, post for my mind to cling to in place of something I thought I wanted. But I don't know what I want anymore. And to truly understand what I want, I need to let you go.

It's hard, and I'm going to need all the help I can get. Because as much as I've clung to you, you've DUG into me. I gave you claws that had no reason so you turned and shoved them into my chest just to give them something to do. 

You don't care about me, but you NEED me. I made you that way because that's how I am. I relish in the misplaced trust people have in me.

And you're not real. You could never be real, because if you were then I could do nothing else but turn you away. 

Because you're not healthy. My idea of love is not healthy. 

It's been twisted and turned and shredded so many times by my own destructive thoughts that I fell in love with a mind and came back out loving a monster. And the worst part is that I created it. 

How many people would I hurt if I didn't give you up? How many lovers - TRUE lovers - would I turn away in looking for someone that doesn't exist? How much hatred would a man have to possess for me to accept him instead of you? Because I made you to BE me, so I could try to love myself. But I hate myself. You hate me, and I suppose that means that I hate you, and I love what you COULD have been.

You're mindless. You're cold. You're both incredibly perfect and ungodly flawed. You are a product of a broken mind, and if I want to find love, a love that I can be proud of, a love that I truly WANT, I can't keep picking up broken pieces just to cut myself with them. 

I want to be warm again. I want to be colorful again. I want to laugh at something and have the sound not be bitter to my ears.

If I continue to love you in this way I have been, you will destroy me. 

And I'm terrifyingly okay with that. I WANT that, even. But I don't want to want that.

I'll need help. Because you were an addiction I indulged in just a little too long. I can't free myself from you on my own. I am going to need help.

I just need to figure out how to ask for it.

And I need to figure out how to hate you.

Sincerely, Me.


	3. Anxiety

What am I, that I feel lonely now, of all things?

Perhaps this cold and dark is getting to me.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it is simply the fact that I am glimpsing the golden era from behind a veil, unseen and unheard as I try, desperately, to understand.

This veil is as sheer as it is mine.

As black as it is purposeful. 

As suffocating as it is necessary.

Surely, then, if I had been there, in that reel of faint memory, I would have ruined it all.

For what do I have to offer?

Perhaps the reason the past taunts me so--seven years ago--is that I don't remember myself then.

I cannot remember my own thoughts, my own feelings, my own face.

I cannot remember my friendships or my happiness, my lonliness or my anger.

What then?

What then?

I panic, static-mouth, as I look upon these things so old with present eyes, knowing that they are timeless and stagnant and dead, and my feeble attempts to revive them are most likely for naught.

I look upon these things and see the art, the intent, the time, the passion and love poured into them, and long to contribute to them myself, to carve out a space for myself in the stony face of their camaraderie, even as I know I do not belong, that it is not mine.

Perhaps I don't want to be a part of these things at all. 

Perhaps I merely look at the dates, the passage of time and I funnel back into my past self.

Aimless, unremarkable, looking in a mirror and realizing that there is nothing there to see.

I don't remember.

I cannot remember anything but a faint presence, that which has always been there, watching in obscurity as I join it in my darkest moments.

Speak to it in my desperation for someone who will listen to the silence that emanates from my lips.

I don't know. 

Perhaps I long for nothing at all.

Perhaps my chest aches and my pulse stutters and my mouth dries for no other than the self-deprecation I layer upon my skin like a medication, and this is nothing more than a spiral that I will most likely drown in.

The future looms, so, so tall, and dangerous.

It blocks out the presence and makes it hard to fade into the shadows that once held me like a lover and shielded me from the harshness of the world by digging knives into my skin until I could feel nothing at all.

This fear of the beastly future, it consumes me. 

So if I linger in my wretched past, do not scorn me.

Because I may not remember, but I know.

Because I am here.

I have clawed my way here, past all the monsters and demons behind, and I stand now on a precipice. 

Do not look at me as though I am stupid, or ignorant.

Call me a coward if you must.

But the truth is that I am afraid.

Afraid of the future for what it brings, afraid of the past for what it broke.

In the end, you will gawk at my blindness as I shrink back into the arms of my past, as I collapse into the grasp of my demons.

But, as they say, better the devil you know.

And I, the Devil, am a one-man show.


	4. Regret

There is a vault in the depths of my mind. 

For however fortified it seems on the outside, it is not very secure. It is small, and cracked, and it oozes out the one thing it is supposed to keep in when I'm just too drained to shut it.

This one thing. The culmination of everything wrong with me, the reason for dissonance in my skull. 

But it was safe. It wasn't holding that thing well but it was holding it. Containing it. Those little cracks were faint whispers in the back of my mind--easy to drown with music and sounds and words. 

Because the thing is...I have no one. I look at the ones I used to lean on, the ones I gave myself too, the ones I trusted, through a portal of glass. See their smiles, see their lives, and see that they have, in the minimal infinity that I've gone through since I left, forgotten me. 

But her.

I can't escape her.

She is my one constant. She is everywhere I look, the very air I breathe, the blood in my veins, the beat of my heart and she is killing me.

She digs claws of guilt into my soul, pries thoughts that are supposed to be silent from my tongue, rips me apart with love as she convinces me that I need no one but her.

She does not do this on purpose. Every fault within us is mine. I have chained myself to her in a way that can only be undone in death, and even then it will crush me.

But I can't help myself. I see her pain and my throat tightens, my eyes burn, and my heart numbs. Yet it is not her fault, because she only uses the weapons I allow her. 

I am a parasite.

I lie, and I take, and I hurt until I am afraid to ask for anything because I don't want to lose this. I don't have anything else.

But this is not about her. This is about him. 

I've kept that vault shut for so long now that things are almost normal again. I don't think about it. And when I do think about it I don't think about it because by then I've put it back in the vault. 

But she's always been able to rip open my chest to get what she wants. And I cut myself open and hand her my innards so she can judge me, because that is what we do. This is who we are. 

The vault was like a lake. Still, stagnant, all the debris and dirt and silt long since settled on the bottom of it all.

And she just plunged her hand in--trying to help, trying to take some of my burdens as I held onto them with a locked jaw--and then everything came rushing back up to the surface. My still lake is gone. In it's place are shaky hands, heaving lungs, too tight holds, and wave after wave of debilitating hate. 

I'm not even certain who I hate anymore. 

Her, him, myself, everyone? 

And for what? What do I hate them for?

I learned very early in life that hated and love are not different things. They coincide. I love my hatred and hate my love and in doing so realize that I love people that I shouldn't and I hate people that don't deserve it.

I'm a mess of emotion. I feel weak. Cowardly. Fragile. My mind shoves things at me in my sleep, shouting at me not through the visions but through the feeling of those seer sights we call dreams. Prisons. 

And yet...I'm still so angry. 

My rage frightens me. 

I ache for a high I cannot receive, my morals strangling my nonchalance as I guzzle self-pity and wish for something stronger. 

But my loyalty to her holds me back.

She is always, always, holding me back.

But I'm blearily grateful because without her tearful shackles I would have disappeared over an edge I would not have come back from. My mind would be lost and my body would be feral, a rabid dog starving for something it could never reach again. 

So though I'm stained, tainted, I am also pure. It gives me no joy. My body is free of any addiction, whether it be pain, pleasure, or some mutation of both.

I hate it. 

But she loves me for it. So I continue to be blind to stronger poisons, for her.

And I hate it. 

But I am redeemed.


End file.
